Direito à acessibilidade de estudantes com deficiência em escolas públicas: decisões do Tribunal de Justiça de Mato Grosso do Sul

Abstract

This dissertation is linked to the research project “Special Education Policies: discourses, transversalities and actions in the context of practice” and to the Postgraduate Program in Borders and Human Rights at the Federal University of Grande Dourados (UFGD), in the research line Identities, Diversity and Social and Environmental Rights. From this perspective, it approached the debate on the judicialization of special education policies from the perspective of inclusive education, with the general objective of analyzing the decisions of the Court of Justice of Mato Grosso do Sul (TJMS), rendered in public civil actions, related to the accessibility of students with disabilities in municipal and State public schools. Therefore, the specific objectives were listed: understanding education, accessibility for people with disabilities and school inclusion as fundamental human rights; scrutinize the judicialization of the right to school inclusion for students with disabilities; contextualize in the TJMS the processing of public civil actions on school accessibility for students with disabilities, as well as analyze their causes of action, requests and legal reasoning; and to problematize the perspectives of the right to school accessibility in the TJMS. This study´s theoretical framework is the social model of disability, a concept that emphasizes external barriers, and not body impairments, as obstacles to the full participation of people with disabilities in society. This theory guided the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, approved by the United Nations (UN) in 2006 and is the guideline for accessibility legislation in Brazil. This is a documentary type and qualitative research, whose materiality focused on judgments made available on the TJMS website, from 2001 to 2021. The corpus consisted of 17 decisions, which originated from actions that had appeals judged . The results were systematized into three units of analysis: cause of action, request and the legal reasoning of decisions. The cause of action was the Municipal or State Government default to observe accessibility in schools, limited to the architectural inadequacy of buildings and public school transport for people with disabilities. The requests were for the immediate realization of renovations and adaptations in the physical spaces of public schools; to exhibit the Project for physical structure reform, with a deadline for the execution; provision of school transport; construction of a parking space at the school for people with disabilities or reduced mobility. The decisions were reasoned on the right to accessibility expressed in Brazilian laws. From the perspective of this research, accessibility in the educational area means the elimination of barriers, to guarantee the full participation of people with disabilities in school. Decisions in collective actions are more likely to have a positive impact on society than a decision in individual actions, limited to the sphere of interest of the benefited party. However, school inclusion goes beyond architectural adaptations, so, it worries that in the decisions identified, the Judiciary has only been provoked to treat about school transport and the spatial dimension of accessibility.